Queen’s Speech

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I offer my apologies, because I shall be a little wide of the subjects listed for today’s debate on the gracious Speech, as I will speak on the continuing need for protection online for children aged under 18 and then turn to the role of parents in their children’s education.

I begin by saying how delighted I was to read in the background document published with the gracious Speech that one of the purposes of the digital economy Bill is the:

“Protection of children from online pornography by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material”.

This, of course, represents the honouring of the commitment made in the 2015 Conservative manifesto. In their consultation earlier this year on age verification for pornographic websites, the Government reported the outcome of their research through comScore about children accessing adult sites in May 2015. This revealed that 1.4 million visitors aged under 18 accessed adult sites from their desktops and that the data represented 20% of those aged under 18 accessing the internet and 13% of children aged six to 14. In the context where we have the technology to allow the introduction of proper age verification, failing to do so is indefensible.

As noble Lords will know, I have long campaigned for this change through my Online Safety Bill, and I particularly want to thank all those who have supported me in raising the issue in this House. That it is a matter of real public concern was underlined yet again in a letter I received yesterday from the Cornwall Community Standards Association expressing the hope that the law will be implemented as soon as possible. I warmly congratulate the Government on taking this important step, and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, the Minister responsible, who has worked so hard on this issue.

The audio-visual regulations already provide some protection for children from accessing R18-rated material that is streamed from pornographic websites based in the United Kingdom. I am pleased that the Government propose in their consultation document that there should be an extension of the material to include pornographic content that the British Board of Film Classification would consider rating as 18. This is something for which I, too, have been urging for a while. However, at the heart of the age verification challenge is the need to recognise what ATVOD reported on this issue in 2014, that 23 of the top 25 adult sites accessed in the UK were located abroad, and I have no reason to believe that the situation has changed. It is the material from outside the UK that is especially problematical and has in effect been unregulated. The key goal for the Government must therefore be to develop an enforceable means of requiring foreign pornographic sites projecting material into the UK to introduce robust age verification, whether the material being supplied is free or not.

Last year in my Online Safety Bill I proposed a licensing scheme based on the Gambling Act 2005 for those who want to supply pornography into the UK market from abroad. In Committee on the Bill, the Minister kindly described my proposal as an,

“innovative approach … to solving this challenge”.—[Official Report, 11/12/15; col. 1811.]

The essence of my proposal makes it very clear whether a foreign website whose content includes either 18 or R18-rated pornography is in compliance with UK law by having a licence or not. It is a simple yes/no, and a criminal offence will have been committed for not having a licence and a statutory system of financial transaction blocking.

I have retabled an updated version of my own Online Safety Bill principally to highlight the robust statutory age verification enforcement mechanism set out in Clauses 8 to 12, so I look forward very much to the publication of the digital economy Bill, and I hope that the Government will study carefully the relevant clauses of my Bill, particularly when addressing the matter of enforcement.

Having sung the Government’s praises, I must now turn to the education for all Bill and strike a rather different note. I am concerned about the Government’s White Paper entitled Educational Excellence Everywhere, which presumably will inform the direction of the education for all Bill announced in the gracious Speech. There is much that could be said, but I shall focus specifically on the Government’s proposals for school governors, and in so doing I must declare an interest as president of the National Governors Association. Paragraph 3.30 of the White Paper states:

“We will expect all governing boards to focus on seeking people with the right skills for governance, and so we will no longer require academy trusts to reserve places for elected parents on governing boards”.

It goes on to say that,

“fully skills-based governance will become the norm across the education system … Parents often have these skills and many parents already play a valuable role in governance”.

But the point is clear: parents can contribute towards being governors, but the key fact that they are a parent is not fully relevant. What is important is that they have the right skills for school governance, to which it would seem that being a parent is only incidental. Some might think that this is a good message to send, but I do not. I fear that the Government are being tempted by what I have to describe as a rather technocratic view of schools in which governors may have special expertise unrelated to being a parent while parents principally seem to be treated as consumers who must be given lots of information to help them hold their school to account and, if necessary, complain.

I believe that schools should be regarded as a rooted outworking of their communities. One of the ways in which that is realised is by giving parents who live in the community and carry the ultimate responsibility for their children a clear stake in school governance via seats on school governing bodies. Parents are the ones with their feet on the ground, knowing what is happening at the school, what other parents are feeling and whether their children are thriving. Of course one can particularly encourage parents with additional qualifications to engage, but being a parent must in itself be recognised as one of the most important aspects of the appropriate qualification. In the end, schools act in loco parentis. Parents will not take kindly to the idea that they are being displaced from the governance of their children’s schools by experts. I wish that the Government would think again.

I end by warmly congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle on her brilliant, moving and historic maiden speech. I hope that it will not be too long before she has other women Bishops joining her on those Benches.